Maybe it is too "New York" for Academy Award voters. Maybe it's too subtle. Whatever the reason, Inside Llewyn Davis is my nominee for most unfairly overlooked film at the Oscars this year.

Thank heavens, the nominations Thursday couldn't ignore the film's sublime cinematography — the best of the year — by Bruno Delbonnel. But how could they ignore the Coen brothers script and direction, Oscar Isaac's lead performance? After all, they came up with nine best picture nominations; they could easily have made it 10. (It got a second nod only in the relatively obscure sound mixing category.)

My other disappointments on Thursday morning included no acting nominations for the great veteran Robert Redford (All Is Lost) or for Joaquin Phoenix (Her) or Tom Hanks (Captain Phillips). Any one of those was superior to the nominated Leonardo Di Caprio (The Wolf of Wall Street). I also would have preferred Emma Thompson for best actress for Saving Mr. Banks instead of Meryl Streep, who delivers a very rare over-the-top portrayal in August: Osage County.

As for the good news, I'm satisfied with the justified attention earned by the year's two best movies — 12 Years a Slave (with nine nominations) and Gravity (with 10).

As we move on to awards night on March 2, the big competition is shaping up between the somewhat-similar American Hustle and The Wolf of Wall Street. Both have best picture, best director and best actor nods, and I suspect they'll got toe-to-toe. I can only hope they'll split the best picture vote enough so 12 Years a Slave and Gravity will have a shot.

AMERICAN WOLVES. Two of the season's most talked-about films have a lot in common. American Hustle and The Wolf of Wall Street both profile the role of greed in the American financial landscape and the nature of the hustle.

David O. Russell's American Hustle takes a serio-comic approach to the FBI Abscam sting operations of the late '70s and early '80s, which attempted to unveil and cease public corruption on a wide scale.

Martin Scorsese's The Wolf of Wall Street is based on the memoir of Jordan Belfort, who was eventually convicted of financial fraud crimes, stock manipulation and operating a penny stock boiler room.

Both films take an exuberant, over-the-top approach to their topics, somewhat adapting the operatic tone of such predecessors as Brian De Palma's Scarface.

Both Hustle and The Wolf find their entertainment value in their portraits of the very colorful, over-sized central figures in each saga, whether it's Irving Rosenfeld (Christian Bale), Agent DiMaso (Bradley Cooper), Sydney Prosser (Amy Adams) and Mayor Polito (Jeremy Renner) of American Hustle, or Belfort (Leonardo DiCaprio), Donnie Azoff (Jonah Hill), or Mark Hanna (Matthew McConaughey) of The Wolf of Wall Street.

Both films depict the wild extravaganzas of major wealth, including sex, drugs and decadence. This is especially true of The Wolf of Wall Street, which is one of the raunchiest and most foul-mouthed of Scorsese's films.

Of the two, The Wolf is the more polished and beautifully filmed, simply because Scorsese is a long-established master of the cinema, while the talented Russell has only recently started his climb up the ladder.

However, The Wolf of Wall Street is too long at three hours. (I never object to length, in and of itself. I just demand that the length be required by the story. Every great film justifies its length.) Still, The Wolf is energetic and perversely entertaining. American Hustle tells its equally complex story in 40 minutes less time.

Both deserve the attention of most thoughtful adult viewers.

THOSE LOONEY TUNES. In the wide world of animated shorts — cartoons — nothing has ever approached the comic genius and inventiveness of the Warner Bros. Looney Tunes franchise. This, friends, is the world of Bugs Bunny, Porgy Pig, the Road Runner, Sylvester and Tweety, and my personal favorite Daffy Duck.

Disney certainly made great cartoons, including some that are unsurpassable for pure, animated beauty. But none touches the entertaining insanity of the best of the Looney Tunes, created by such acknowledged geniuses as Chuck Jones, Tex Avery, Bob Clampett, and Friz Freleng, during the golden age of animation (1930 to 1969).

Accordingly, the Eastman House is celebrating The Wild World of Looney Tunes, with a dozen cartoons at the Dryden Theatre at 8 p.m. Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday. The Eastman House promises "a wacky evening with the greatest 'wabbit' alive, Bugs Bunny, and the whole Looney Tunes gang!"